


tell me a story, traveler.

by SandyRoses



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: ?? - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fluff, Huli Jing, Kind of vague, M/M, Magic, Sun and Moon Symbolism, aka Chinese kitsune, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:42:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25138654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandyRoses/pseuds/SandyRoses
Summary: Wonwoo has been lonely ever since he was created.
Relationships: Jeon Wonwoo/Wen Jun Hui | Jun
Comments: 12
Kudos: 56





	tell me a story, traveler.

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so someone suggested I write fox spirit Junhui and I was like!!!! yes!!!!!! and I was also having major feels about Fallin' Flower Wonwoo so  
> yeah  
> This is mostly inspired by the mv, but I added my own vague touch  
> sorry if it's confusing, but I hope you enjoy! I know there's really no emphasis on jun being a foxy boy but like  
> I might write another...?

In the center of the world, there is a man, sitting in the vast wasteland of nothingness, holding down the sun and the moon to the earth with great chains attached to his wrists, heavy dust and grains of sand trailing through his night-black hair, spilling down his cloud-pale skin. There is nothing for him there but the constant kiss of the wind on his ears, brushing over him as though he isn't there. And with no one around to see him, is he really there at all?

Every day, he pulls on the chain on his right hand, and the sun rises, bathing him in yellow-gold-shining light, warm and sharp. Every night, he pulls on the chain on his left hand, and the moon shyly follows, softer, kinder. The clouds are not his domain, so if the sky rains, he’ll tilt his head up, close his eyes, and feel the water on his skin, so different from the dry emptiness around him. It’s refreshing.

At night, he watches the stars flash before his eyes and wishes for a companion, anyone to break the desperate loneliness in his heart, but the stars have never answered his prayers, and he does not expect them to. The stars are not his domain either, and he cannot ask the sun and the moon for more than they have given him: life and light.

So he sits in the dust in the center of the world and waits for someone to see him while the world passes by, unaware of his efforts. Inside, he feels just as dry and empty as the plains he surveys every single day and every single night. He is not afraid of the shadows, but every so often he wishes they would come alive, if only to spend a night with him, to give him the feeling of not being alone. He would take that.

It’s why he’s so surprised when he sees a tall figure walking towards him one evening, right after he’d pulled the moon into place. As they come closer, his eyes widen at their beautiful garments, layers of robes sewn with gold and silver and precious gems, set onto what must be the finest silks on the earth. Immediately, he’s enamoured, just by the colors alone, and as the figure approaches, he grows even more stunned at the beauty of their face, unlike anything he could have dreamed of.

They’re a man, tall, like him, with a slender figure that seems dwarfed by his robes, but broad in the shoulders, and his waist is cinched impossibly small with a golden sash that should be gaudy but isn’t, somehow. His face is handsome, strikingly so, and the gentle slope of his nose and the intense dark of his eyes are almost intimidatingly gorgeous. He seems crafted by the gods themselves, not quite human, emphasized by the large, sapphire-blue pearl hanging around his neck and the bushel of soft lavender flowers in his arms. He’s...beautiful.

The man comes to a stop in front of him, and his petal-pink lips speak with a soft voice, lilting and alluring. “Hello. What do you call yourself?”

“...Wonwoo.” It takes him a moment to find his voice, to find the courage to even open his mouth in front of this gorgeous creature. Surely he cannot be mortal; his aura is too unearthly. “And yours?”

“You may call me Junhui.” Junhui. Foreign, but beautiful. Wonwoo wants to say it aloud, to taste the syllables, let them fall from his lips, but he dares not. “What are you doing here?”

And he, “I could ask the same of you. I’ve gotten nary a single visitor over the course of my lifetime. You are...unprecedented.”

Junhui laughs, and Wonwoo’s grip on his chains grows tight. The wind sings a haunting song in his ear but he doesn’t hear it, not when Junhui’s voice makes for a much sweeter sound.

“You could call me...a traveler,” Junhui hums, a small smile making his lips tilt up unevenly, eyes narrowed with mirth. “Though an odd one.”

Wonwoo nods, in part because he knows not how to respond to that. “...And how, pray tell, might you have found your way here, to the center of all that is? It is a long journey from here to anywhere else.”

And Junhui, clever smile and all, “I like to wander.” He pets the bushel of lavender, perhaps absently, and the urge to know of the outside world consumes Wonwoo like the fires of the sun and the soft beams of the moon, bubbling in his blood.

“Please, if you have the time, would you spare me a tale? I have not moved from this spot since my creation,” he asks, near a plea, and Junhui smiles again, sharp, but somehow fond, as though just as eager to sit and tell a story to the one who holds down the sun and moon.

“I would like nothing more.”

And that was how Wonwoo learned of the earth beyond his empty desert, learned of great towering forests and even greater mountains, learned of the culture of many people, people like him, each with their own gift from the universe. He learned of the colors of the sunset and the gleam of an animal’s eye, the sound of water against rock.

He wishes he could see. He wishes with all the selfish vanity in his heart that he could put down his chains, just for a moment, and follow Junhui to the ends of the earth, but he knows he cannot, so Junhui’s stories will have to suffice, sating the caged monster in Wonwoo’s chest called Curiosity. He listens with wide eyes and bated breath, half of him focused on Junhui’s words and half focused on Junhui’s unearthly beauty.

“And you?” he interrupts carefully when Junhui tells him of the other gifted people in the world, “surely you cannot be human.” It’s bashful, his inquisitiveness, but Junhui only smiles at him once again, benevolent.

 _“Huli jing,”_ he says in his mother tongue, the sounds foreign but smooth on Wonwoo’s ears. “A fox spirit.” In a flick of a second, Jun’s eyes blaze gold, and red markings trail along his cheeks as a fan of red-orange tails spreads out behind him. Then, the display is gone, and Junhui looks normal again, save for his pearl, which glows softly with his power.

“Beautiful,” Wonwoo utters, unthinkingly, stunned and entranced, only to come back to himself when Junhui reaches out, warm, smooth fingertips touching his cheek.

“You are beautiful as well, one who holds the sun and moon,” Junhui whispers, eyes full of knowing, full of...things Wonwoo cannot describe with words. “If I could show the world through more than my voice, I would. I would bring you gifts of the highest expense and shower you in lovely things, and never again would you be alone.”

"All I would desire is your presence.” It comes out achingly honest, and had Wonwoo possessed more dignity he would have been embarrassed at his painful need for connection, for a companion, latching onto the first available presence.

“Then my presence you shall have,” Junhui says simply, leaning into his side. “Rest assured, I have traveled a long, long time, and I would like a rest.” Setting the bushel of lavender down at Wonwoo’s feet, Junhui turns his head to gaze up at the sky, and Wonwoo follows his eyes, tracing the familiar sights of a million stars. He wonders who controls them.

“Are you sure it would not bore you? There is nothing here,” Wonwoo says quietly, eyes fixed on the stars, and Junhui lifts his shoulders in a small shrug, dismissive.

“You are here, and you interest me, far more than any worldly sight I’ve come across. That is enough for me.”

“...Thank you.”

“Everyone should have a friend.”

“...That is true.”

In the center of the world, if you ever take the chance to venture there, you might find a man, kneeling in the sand, with night-black hair and skin as pale as bone, holding onto the sun and moon and directing them as he so pleases, the only one around for many miles.

But perhaps, on a clear, cloudless night, you might find a fox laying by his side, eyes made of gold, a blue pearl clutched in its teeth. Around them, sprigs of lavender grow, and if you stop to tell them a tale, it is said they will grant you a great gift, a fortune of love to last a lifetime, should you be blessed by their approval.

But of course, once you pass, when you look back, if you don’t see them, were they ever really there?

**Author's Note:**

> this is one of the strangest stories I've written I honestly don't know how to feel about it


End file.
